| It begins with a solemn funeral…for a car. By the end of Chris Paine's lively and informative documentary, the idea doesn't seem quite so strange. As narrator Martin Sheen notes, "They were quiet and fast, produced no exhaust and ran without gasoline." Paine proceeds to show how this unique vehicle came into being and why General Motors ended up reclaiming its once-prized creation less than a decade later. He begins 100 years ago with the original electric car. By the 1920s, the internal-combustion engine had rendered it obsolete. By the 1980s, however, car companies started exploring alternative energy sources, like solar power. This, in turn, led to the late, great battery-powered EV1. Throughout, Paine deftly translates hard science and complex politics, such as California's Zero-Emission Vehicle Mandate, into lay person's terms (director Alex Gibney, Oscar-nominated for Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, served as consulting producer). And everyone gets the chance to have their say: engineers, politicians, protesters, and petroleum spokespeople--even celebrity drivers, like Peter Horton, Alexandra Paul, and a wild man beard-sporting Mel Gibson. But the most persuasive participant is former Saturn employee Chelsea Sexton. Promoting the benefits of the EV1 was more than a job to her, and she continues to lobby for more environmentally friendly options. Sexton provides the small ray of hope Paine's film so desperately needs. Who Killed the Electric Car? is, otherwise, a tremendously sobering experience. --Kathleen C. Fennessy Stills from Who Killed the Electric Car? (click for larger image) Writer/Director Chris Paine Blogs About Who Killed the Electric Car
 When Who Killed the Electric Car premiered at the Sundance Film Festival (on the same weekend as An Inconvenient Truth), we wondered whether movie goers were ready for a new kind of 'action film'. Fortunately people jumped onboard and this seems even more true today.
We put this DVD together after the release of the film to include a dozen short scenes we couldn't quite fit into our story. My favorite is one with Stan and Iris Ovshinsky who developed the revolutionary battery technology that powered GM's electric car (and today's Prius). These two brilliant octogenarians took our small camera crew on a Willy Wonka style tour of their inventions including the world's largest thin film solar cell factory. As we stood under a football field size machine in Troy Michigan, I blustered "Is solar power back?" Stan exclaimed " What?! Solar never went away... What was back was backward thinking!" And as his machine cranked out miles of solar cells above us, we knew he was right.
I'm especially glad that the optimistic last scene of Who Killed the Electric Car has proven that we weren't just wishful thinkers when we finished our edit. The clips feature the first glimpse of the ultra fast Tesla electric sports prototype as well the Zenn neighborhood electric vehicle. Both cars are starting to roll off production lines today. And while the State of California (and some car companies) are still gambling on hydrogen fuel cells, plug-in cars are proving to be more environmentally efficient and popular. Early adopters deserve a lot of the credit. Oil companies and the internal combustion engine monopoly may have "killed" thousands of electric cars (EVs) in the 1990s, but EVs are coming back. (Stay tuned for next film...)
I hope you'll find our documentary takes you on a wild ride out of the 20th century and into the 21st. --Chris Paine, Writer/Director |
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 Who Killed the Electric Car? |
| Review Date: September 5, 2010 |
| Reviewer: John A. Jay, Dallas, Tx |
| This very good. It shows how when a major auto manufacture gets in bed witch the government and the two work out a scheme that will benefit them and at the same time hurt the American people. It is all about greed and money. The electric car was a very good idea and would have saved our environment from being what is today. We the American people need to wake up and take back what belongs to us. If we don't soon this will no longer be the America it once was. |
A Must See Documentary
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| Review Date: August 29, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Debbie Davis, Laguna Beach, CA USA |
If you drive a car that runs on gas, you should watch this video.
Our planet's use of gas and oil needs to stop. The filth, death, and destruction that oil creates has gone on far too long. Better, cleaner and cheaper fuel alternatives have been available for decades, but we don't use them. The video will show how an entire planet of over 4 billion people are asleep (with a few exceptions).
Time for us all to wake up. |
my review
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| Review Date: August 19, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Charles Atteberry, |
| I was very happy that this came so quickly and that it looks like it's in really good shape. Would be happy to buy from this seller in the future. |
Great Documentary, Very Entertaining
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| Review Date: August 18, 2010 |
| Reviewer: LeeHoFooks, |
This is a no-BS documentary that explains the history of the electric car -- and why we aren't all driving them right now.
So what's the answer to the titular question? After all is said and done, whodunnit? The guilty parties:
Oil Companies - Conspired against the electric car for obvious reasons. One of their methods was to buy electric car patents... and do nothing with them.
U.S. Car Companies - Sabatoged the success of their own (electric) cars to make them appear inefficient so that the government wouldn't force them to make non-emitting vehicles. Put quarterly earnings ahead of the big picture, especially GM. (Does that surprise anyone?)And guess who rules the auto industry now? Japan, with Honda and Toyota's hybrid-electric vehicles. Efficiency isn't just for hippies; it makes economic sense.
Hydrogen Cells - A bait-and-switch to distract from the more realistic "alternative" vehicle. Hydrogen-powered cars will always be 10-15 years away.
California Air Resources Board - Repealed the Zero Emissions Vehicle mandate that the car companies feared so much.
The U.S. Government - Supported industry's attack on the electric car. For example, the Bush administration wasted billions on hydrogen-cell technology that went nowhere. Bush's stimulus bill also gave far more money in tax credits to people for buying SUV's and Hummers than for buying electric cars. (Fiscal conservatism?)
Consumers - For remaining ignorant and distrustful of innovative technology. The average person drives 29 miles a day, but people don't trust a car that can go 90 miles on one charge. Why?
Not guilty:
The Cars Themselves, and Their Distrusted Batteries - Electric cars aren't some pipedream. The technology exists. In fact, the cars existed... until the car companies had them crushed.
This film is excellent. It's as entertaining as it is informative, and it manages to avoid the sensationalism many documentaries suffer from and the depressing tone and alarmism common in environmental films. I highly recommend that everyone see this. |
The real truth about electric cars
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| Review Date: August 6, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Adam Fakes, |
A must see documentary, the real truth about electric cars and their viability.
The short answer is "They are viable - there is no doubt".
The only reason they are not mass produced is that oil companies don't have the guts to change their business model and start diversifying their interests. |
We are still waiting for an electric car
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| Review Date: June 27, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Clark D. Young, Fort Worth, TX, USA |
After viewing "Who Killed the Electric Car?", I am confused. GM now says that the Chevrolet Volt is only 2 or 3 years away from going into production. What was wrong with the EV1 that was leased to California drivers? They loved it. So what did GM do? They demanded that every single one be returned to them, and, save for 1 single EV1 that ended up in an auto museum, they were crushed. But don't blame just GM. Ford, Toyota, and Honda also had electric vehicles on the road during the same time period. What happened to those vehicles? We still cannot buy or lease any of them. What happened to all those electric vehicles? Where are they now? We are still waiting for viable electric cars to be sold as alternatives to gasoline powered internal combustion polluting cars. The best that we have right now are hybrids.
As the movie states, GM crushed the EV1 (literally) and only months later, introduced the Hummer. Kind of hard to feel sorry for GM now, isn't it? |
Electric cars ... who knew?
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| Review Date: January 30, 2010 |
| Reviewer: D. Reed, Chevy Chase, MD |
Who Killed The Electric Car is a movie that all concerned citizens should see! It was well done and it showed facts without a political agenda. You're free to draw your own conclusions, but you'll think about why automobile manufacturers secretly destroyed their electric cars when movie stars and many others were going to extreme lengths in an attempt buy one.
I was not aware that people were using electric cars as there regular means of transportation in the 1990s. That fact and many other facts were real eyeopeners for me. After watching the movie, I'm convinced that electric cars will be the wave of the future. The demands of the public will cause automobile manufacturers to build electric cars and not destroy them. The general public will not accept having to spend their money on oil related products and expensive maintenance when they can have more efficient, clean, and almost maintenance free automobiles. |
All Americans should see
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| Review Date: January 30, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Valerie A. Lutzen, Mequon, WI |
| A real investigation should be conducted as to why this car was taken off the market several years ago. I smell a rat. Is there any investigative journalists up to the challenge? |
Where does electricity come from?
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| Review Date: January 22, 2010 |
| Reviewer: TPower, CDA, Id USA |
We have been using electricity for over 100 years and I can't believe, based on the reviews of this documentary, how many people have no idea where it comes from. ELECTRICITY IS NOT A SOURCE OF ENERGY! Think about that a minute.....say it out loud..ELECTRICITY IS NOT A SOURCE OF ENERGY! Electricity is only a means to effectively move energy from one location to another. In order to create electrical energy you need some sort of machine to create it and some energy source needs to drive that machine, like coal, gas, hydro, nuclear, and for those of you who don't understand how large our current needs are, you can wish for wind, geothermal and solar.
Converting to electric anything will only increase our demand for generating facilities and this increased demand can not be satisfied with "green" sources. Until we come up with a totally different method of generating energy, beyond our current understanding of physics, we need to look at what is the best way to use the energy sources we have and be realistic in how we develop them. This is not a big conspiracy, this is real life, coal, gas, hydro and nuclear are the most abundant and efficient source of energy that we have and will have for many years to come. |
This should be seen by every adult.
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| Review Date: December 20, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Boydjoe, Nashville, TN United States |
| Don't watch this documentary if your blood pressure tends to skyrocket when you encounter something that makes even an experienced and hardened realist cringe at the corporate gluttony which is revealed here. Every adult U. S. citizen as well as all high school students should be exposed to the conduct demonstrated here which has actually set our country back both in our economic health and in our national security. Here we have what WAS a major corporation on the brink of a new technology which could have benefitted both the corporation and the citizens of this country, and they threw it all away due to its own ill conceived corporate greed and the greedy pressure of its big oil allies. We see in this video a description of what the anti-trust laws were designed to prevent, and yet nothing was done by our government to stop what happened. I cannot recommend this highly enough. |
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